Stop the boats? Stop the propaganda!

Australia has moved from talking about stopping asylum seekers to stopping the boats, shamefully removing human lives from the equation altogether, writes David Hardaker.

There's something about the debate around asylum seekers that taps into the darkness in the souls of millions of Australians. There's a reflexive suspicion and bigotry which is being manipulated and forged into hatred by wordsmiths on the government payroll.

It's a practice of the black art of propaganda which is despicable and verges on the evil. It comes from those clever enough to know the power of language to manipulate and immoral enough to care little of the consequences.

The debate around asylum seekers has always been framed around the undeclared racism that infects so much of Australia. John Howard's line, "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come", worked powerfully on those who suspected filthy foreigners were trying to overtake good upstanding Australia. The concept of "border protection" cleverly excised not only parts of Australia but also any reference to humans. But now even these manipulations look positively benign.

The Rudd Government's announcement of the PNG solution for asylum seekers has taken the language offensive one step further. For some reason a government minister, Jason Clare, thinks it is acceptable to talk about placing "a bounty on the heads" of people smugglers. Its companion image is the bounty hunter, taking the law into their own hands. The word belongs in the same category as "vigilantes".

The authors of the phrasing will no doubt have a hundred ways to justify it. "Protecting Australia" will be among them. But those who play with words for a living know the dark side of their patriotic message. And that dark side is to let loose and dignify a spirit of vengeance that lurks in our midst. Should a good citizen turn up with a gun in one hand and a bloodhound in the other would any of us be surprised? It gives licence to the lynch mob and to the worst of our motivations.

The wordsmiths of the government have also cunningly reframed the debate to focus now on "people smugglers" who "are peddling in misery and death", a breed so criminal and repulsive that we are entitled to call them evil. The masterstroke is to now erase the idea of "asylum seekers" altogether. And as part of the pious marketing package we are asked to consider the asylum seekers now as victims, rather than viewing them as disease-ridden intruders as we were once (quietly) encouraged to do.

The propagandists are, unfortunately, borrowing from the playbook of the Nazis and those before (and after) them who have declared war on "the alien". Let us not disrespect or belittle the horrific tragedy that befell the Jews of Europe, but at the same time let us not ignore that those who committed those atrocities set forth a powerful template of how to manipulate mass opinion. Anyone who cares about compassion and fairness should be on alert.

It all starts, of course, with the objectification of a population. The technique of turning people into objects is propaganda 101. If we don't think we are dealing with people then horrible actions become that much easier to commit. When rounding up the Jews, their persecutors gave them labels which denied their human essence.

In one example in Italy, captors referred to the Jews as "pieces". See, that makes it easier. "Piece #178. Step forward." There are, of course, many other examples. In Australia, once we talked of stopping "asylum seekers". Somewhere along the line it became more effective to talk about stopping "the illegal boats." Where did the people go? And what mind subtly erased humans from the equation?

What goes on in the mind of an Australian government propagandist? What reward is there in using your mind to manipulate with words? Is power, itself, enough?

Whoever is the hand behind this manipulation-by-language should step forward and identify themselves because you are committing language crimes that degrade us.

Come to think of it, I'm tempted to offer a bounty on their heads myself.

David Hardaker is a Walkley award winning journalist and has a BA (Hons), specialising in Linguistics. View his full profile here.